GODREJ

            It had been a long time since I had come across an ad campaign that was aimed at creating awareness about the product, rather than hard selling it by highlighting its USP. So it was interesting to see a Times of India cover page ad for the launch of Godrej Protekt hand sanitizers. Although the product was launched a couple of months ago by model/actress Mugdha Ghodse, the promotion of Protekt is being implemented now.

            Hand Sanitizers, in spite of existing on store shelves since a few years, are the new thing in the minds of Indian consumers. Before the launch of Protekt, Himalaya Healthcare was the only organized player in this category with its brand Pure Hands. With the launch of Godrej Protekt, the FMCG giant Godrej has added the element of Personal Care and Hygiene to the width of its product mix.

The hand sanitizer market in India, currently estimated to be worth around 10 crore INR (around 10% of the total HandWash category), has the potential to become a sizeable category in the near future, especially after the outbreak of epidemics like Swine Flu. Even Himalaya Healthcare, that has been selling hand sanitizers in the Indian market since 2004, saw its sales leapfrog during the H1N1 panic, due to which it started retailing the 500 ml pump packs, which were erstwhile only meant for hospitals and clinics. Godrej, however, denies that the launch of Protekt is an opportunistic move, as hand sanitizers under the Godrej brands Cinthol and Cuticura are already available in the UK and the Middle-East.

“Whatever stock we sold in the last five years or so ever since the launch is the exact stock we sold in the last three to four months”, says Saket Gore, Business Head – Consumer Products of the Himalaya Drug Company.

The strategy, however, that Himalaya was using all the while was to push their product to the consumers through beauty advisors around the country and through doctors. Advertising, so far, for Pure Hands has been nil.

Even Wipro, that launched Hand Sanitizers under its ayurvedic brand Chandrika in August 2009, claimed 15 – 20 lakhs sales within a week of its launch, thanks to the chemists, and the radio and outdoor campaigns.

Godrej had not too long ago repositioned itself, with new colors in its logo, for the next generation. With the launch of Protekt, it has targeted the same audience for whom it had revamped its identity, viz. the youth, the young adults, and the urban crowd.

Following is the front and back of the cover page ad, made by R. K. Swamy BBDO Pvt. Ltd., in the Times of India issue dated February 24, 2010:

LOOK: The look of the ad is decent enough on the front, but the back of the half-page ad gives the impression of an ad for a medical product and not a daily use FMCG product at first sight. This, however, can be overlooked since the front is what every reader will see first.

The visual shows a carefree girl (careless in case of this ad) enjoying pani-puri from a roadside vendor, whereas her hygiene conscious friend is carrying a wash basin.

CONTENT: The copy of the ad is again pretty decent, nothing that I can go gung-ho about. The ad claims to kill 99.99% germs in 15 seconds. The front and the back together display the directions for using the product, and the features of the product like killing germs, fragrance, etc. In the end, it also additionally promotes the Hand Wash and Hand Wipes under the same brand.

The visual used in the ad, that of two girls eating at the roadside, seemed an average idea to me. They could have rather shown a girl playing with a street dog, or even the clichéd bus handles and train doors would have looked better. And moreover, if a girl is hygiene conscious like the one in this ad, then she won’t have any roadside item in the first place, leave aside bothering about cleaning her hands after eating.

CASTING: Again in the casting, the model chosen as carefree and the one chosen to be the hygiene freak wash basin carrier should have been interchanged. I say this because the carefree girl looks fresher, and the hygienic girl’s skin in the ad looks somewhat oily, which is normally not the case in such girls as they keep wiping it off regularly. (My apologies to that model in case she’s reading this!)

CONNECT: One thing I really liked in the ad is the fact that it tried to strike a chord with girls and not boys. This shows that the company and the agency understand their target market, as girls are generally seen to be more finicky about such stuff than guys.

OVERALL RATING: 2.5/5

Changing the consumer mindset and imbibing the habit of hand sanitizer will be the major challenge, not only for Godrej, but for all the players in this category. From Chandrika of Wipro to Handys of Aditya Birla, and now Protekt of Godrej, everyone is trying to place itself on the top shelf inside the new rack of hand sanitizers created in the consumers mind. How many bruises will Protekt give to the other brands in the war for market share is something we will have to sit back and watch.

(P. S.: I am unaware of the term used to refer to such ads that are placed on an additional half cover of the newspaper like a prompter. I request anyone who is aware of this terminology to kindly let me know what it is called in the comments. Thank you.)

HDFC

Since HSBC Bank introduced the concept of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) in India, the machine has come a long way into becoming an indispensable part of our lives. But even today, India still remains a heavily unripe market when it comes to the penetration of ATMs. According to RBI, India had 44,857 ATMs as on 31st May 2009. Although the number sounds disheartening, the fact that the jump from FY 08 to FY 09 in the number of ATMs in India has been a staggering 30% is somewhat reassuring.

Till before April 2009, luring customers to open an account in your bank by demonstrating the quality and quantity of your ATM service used to be one of the major strategies for Banking Institutions. However, this trend ceased when the RBI guidelines in April 2009 made ATM transactions across all Banks free of charge. Even SBI, whose campaigns used to mainly circle around the boastful number of their ATMs across the country, seems to be finding a tough time to come up with another out-of-the-box idea to promote itself.

Amidst this backdrop, HDFC recently came up with an ATM related service as an attempt to lure account holders into its ATM. The newly conceptualized 'My Favorite' option in HDFC ATMs lets you store a specific amount that you regularly withdraw from the ATM in your account records. Thus, each time you use the 'My Favorite' option in an HDFC ATM, it will automatically give you the amount of cash stored in your account. This feature of theirs, they claim, makes ATM transactions 40% faster.

To create awareness about this very feature of its ATMs, HDFC Bank has come up with an Integrated Marketing Campaign, whereby they are promoting this feature by claiming that it will make ATM withdrawals 40% faster. The campaign, conceptualized by Euro RSCG India, covers television, print and outdoor media.

               

LOOK: This TVC shows a man in a towing truck who spots an unsuspecting car owner entering an HDFC ATM, leaving his car unmanned. But as soon as the towing guy attaches the hook to the front of the car, he’s startled by the horn. The car owner is already done with his ATM transaction and is back in his car. Apart from this TVC, various hoardings and print-ads showing super-fast trains have been come up with, which all aim at highlighting that HDFC ATMs work 40% faster than other ATMs because of the ‘My Favorite’ option.

CONTENT: All the ads promoting this feature in various media are somewhat dissimilar in their content. The TVC shows the advantages of saving time by using an HDFC ATM, whereas the hoardings and print ads simply use a super-fast train to relate to the speed of HDFC ATMs. Apart from this, I had come across a very interesting magazine ad under the same campaign that I found brilliant. A prompter, popping out of the side of the magazine read ‘Go to the cover story 40% faster’ on the top, and ‘Just like our HDFC Bank ATMs’ on the bottom when you look under it. And that prompter lead to the cover story of that magazine, along with a print ad of HDFC, which had a join-the-dots game. Once joined, the reader would form a picture of a jet plane, which was nothing but another instrument used in relation to the speed factor.

CASTING: There isn’t much to debate on the casting front of these commercials as the TVC uses familiar models and/or actors, and no Brand Ambassador or mascot has been put to use as such. The makers could have shown a more convincing look of the towing-guy, because it is confusing initially as to whether he’s towing the car or trying to steal it. A Hawaldar character sitting beside him in the van would have also served the purpose.

CONNECT: The ad tries to strike a connect with frequent users of ATM, which in today’s time forms a considerable chunk of the population. The time saving factor used to promote the feature is good, but there could have been a better execution of the same idea. The print copy too is decent.

OVERALL RATING: 2.5/5

                The reason why I gave 50% rating to this campaign is because my reaction towards it was pretty neutral. I neither found it bad, nor that great. I would have rated it higher had I myself wanted to use the HDFC ATM at least once after watching the ad, but even that failed to happen. In spite of having an HDFC debit card, even now I walk into any ATM in sight and withdraw money. 

GOOGLE

The other day, my B-school professor of Business Policy taught us about Defensive Marketing Strategies, a type of marketing warfare strategy designed to protect a company's market share, profitability, product positioning, or mind-share. He mentioned that when companies get to defensive marketing, they start doing things to promote their products which they would have never done in normal circumstances. An example of this would be when the prestigious FMCG giant HUL bought out a whole day's ad slot on all the channels of Star Network, and later repeated the same on Zee Network. HUL had reportedly spent a sum of around 10 crore INR for a single day to buy the 1800 minutes of ad space across all the channels of Star Network. As a result, for that whole day, all Star channels displayed ads of only HUL products like Lifebuoy, Dove, Ponds, etc.

Within a couple of days of that lecture, I came across another example of the same. But this time, it left me flabbergasted. Google, a company that has always believed in product superiority over advertising, entered the domain of broadcast media. The search giant came up with its first ever television commercial during the third quarter of American Super Bowl, the most watched program in US television history.

When I came to know that Google had eventually succumbed to advertising on television, a medium that it had ignored for years, there was a negligible decline in the respect I had for this company. But then I realized I had judged too soon. Although I still disapprove of Google breaking out of its traditional stubbornness for not advertising on television for its search engine, I cannot deny the fact that I applauded loud for the simple genius of this ad. I have to admit, whatever Google does, it does it in style. Following is the ad titled ‘Parisian Love’, created by Google Creative Lab advertising agency and production firm 1^st Ave Machine:

LOOK: The look of this ad comprises of something that I’m sure every single internet user across the world would instantly recognize and connect to, the Google homepage. The whole ad is made on Google itself, and hence would instantly strike a chord with everyone.

CONTENT: This advert features all the various search functions of Google in the simplest and the most effective way possible. The ad shows all the functions that the search giant performs, including maps, flight tracking, spelling correction, dictionary definitions, and its newest development, translation, intertwined into a simple yet sweet love story of an American finding love in Paris.

CASTING: Nil

CONNECT: This ad epitomizes the saying that Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The ad is not only a tutorial to those Google users who were either unaware or unacquainted with certain features of Google, but also an interesting synopsis of almost all of Google’s features. I in fact find the ad so efficient and effective that it can easily make Yahoo and Bing devotees give Google a try.

OVERALL RATING: 4.5/5

                In spite of being a brilliant ad in every way possible, I still feel Google could have come up with a better slogan than ‘Search on’, which is the reason why I cut the 0.5 marks even after ranting so much in praise of the ad.

                Google’s entry in TV advertising domain is somewhat suggestive of the heat that Google has started feeling from its rivals Yahoo and Bing. However, considering that fact that Google still holds a humongous 90.5% share in the search engine market as opposed to the 7.8% share of Yahoo and Bing combined, it is too soon for this mammoth to go defensive.

SPOOFS: Be it a movie, a music video, or an ad, spoofs and parodies are always great fun to watch. And if you have already seen Google’s Parisian Love commercial above, you will understand how easy it is to spoof that ad. Here I’m sharing with you people two of the best spoofs of the ad I came across. Don’t miss them, they’re hilarious.

INDIAN CINEMA - RAJNEETI

A movie is as much of a product as a soap or a pair of shoes or a ketchup bottle. Just as Lux is a product by Hindustan Unilever, 3 Idiots was a product by Vidhu Vinod Chopra's production house, where the former was manufactured to give the consumer a good bath resulting in glowing skin, the latter was produced to provide entertainment to the consumer for three hours. Ipso facto, the trailer of an upcoming movie is nothing different than an advertisement of Coca Cola. Hence, I would also be reviewing movie trailers on this blog.

Six times National Award winning director Prakash Jha's next flick is titled 'Rajneeti'. The movie, scheduled for a 28th May 2010 release, is based on Indian politics. Going by his previous two movies 'Gangajal' and 'Apaharan', Prakash Jha seems to have a good command over Indian politics, and he has stuck to his forte in his next film too. The movie, produced under the UTV banner of Ronnie Screwwala, consists of an ensemble cast of some of the most impact-full actors in the Indian cinema today. The movie is said to be a modern recreation of the Indian epic mythology 'Mahabharata' set in the socio-political scenario.

LOOK: The Indian population as a movie-going audience is yet to mature in many ways, which is the reason why movies like Om Shanti Om are blockbuster hits, whereas movies like Rann, which by the way was a sheer directorial genius, come and go unnoticed. As a result, the kind of look that the trailer of this movie has, viz. thought provoking, intelligent, realistic, is a major turn-off for a huge portion of the Indian population, which is the reason why I doubt the promos of this movie will generate the desired curiosity among the masses. It seems that this maybe the reason why Prakash Jha has taken Ranbir and Katrina for such roles, going by what the current audience demands.

CONTENT: The clippings of the movie shown in the promo are those of riots, election speeches, victories and such related stuff. The vast cast of the movie has been shown in the promo, with a brief yet interesting introduction of their characters. The trailer has been crafted well, and will definitely make a section of the audience await the movie.

CASTING: There is not much to say about the casting of the movie, as the promos make it evident. The movie has been stuffed with apt proportions of powerful performers and glamorous stars. Whether the chosen actors do justice to their characters could be said only after watching the movie.

CONNECT: The film will strike a chord with the movie connoisseurs of urban India, and to some extent with the local population of the states in which the story of the movie seems to be based.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Rajneeti, just like Prakash Jha's previous movies, seems to be the kind of work that will attract the classes, gain accolades from critics, and garner the National awards and the popular ones to a certain extent. But, I believe, the movie will fare above-average and won't be such a huge success at the box-office as it would deserve to be.

VIRGIN MOBILE - GSM CAMPAIGN

Being known as the only telecom service provider in the country that is absolutely youth based, it was obvious that Virgin Mobiles would pick up the youngest heart-throbs of the nation to present their brand to their target. And that is precisely what they have done, by roping in Ranbir Kapoor and Genelia Dsouza to popularize their entry into the GSM market.

This latest brand campaign of Virgin Mobile, titled ‘I is powered by We’, makes use of the catchy ‘Think Milke, Think Hatke’ philosophy to promote the main idea of the power of networking with friends among youngsters.

The campaign, created by Bates 141 agency and Brown Skins production house, features a series of TVCs featuring Ranbir and/or Genelia with their group of friends. The first commercial shows Ranbir’s friends setting up three girls to make his nagging girlfriend leave him. The second ad shows Genelia guiding a friend of hers to woo a girl on a STD call. The third commercial features both Ranbir and Genelia together (a potentially good twosome, but the cold chemistry needs to be worked upon), with a merged group of their friends, helping Ranbir impress and finally ask out a girl in the lift. Following are three of the commercials of the campaign:

LOOK: The overall look of the ad is typical Virgin-ish. One can easily make out that it is a Virgin Mobile commercial, even before the ad climaxes. The ad is young, fresh and colorful, and will definitely make you wait and watch if you come across it while surfing channels.

CONTENT: All the three ads portray a whacky incident and witty-humor, akin to all of Virgin’s commercials since its launch. The communication of the message of the power of networking and connecting with your friends has been shown in a well-crafted manner. But then again, I feel Virgin’s previous ads were funnier and a better watch.

CASTING: The ad mostly contains either fresh or recent faces, who the people have not yet had enough of. Roping in Ranbir and Genelia as Brand Ambassadors was a great idea for Virgin, as they not only are the flavors of the season, but also are an apt fit for the brand. Especially Ranbir, who, after Aamir and Shahrukh, is the third highest paid celebrity endorser in India. And the strength of brand Ranbir is evident from the fact that both Pepsi and Panasonic have renewed their two year contracts with him, and that Pepsi, who had initially signed him for Rs. 2 crores, has offered him a whooping 14 crores this time. Also, Ranbir has been roped in by John Players, where he would be replacing Hrithik Roshan! Albeit Virgin Mobiles as a brand had established itself well in the Indian market by targeting the youth, it was nowhere in the top 5 mobile service providers of the country. I’m pretty sure that this campaign of Virgin will help provide enhanced visibility to the brand, as well as boost its subscriber base.

CONNECT: The ‘Think Milke, Think Hatke’ campaign of Virgin will easily strike a chord with the viewers due to its youth-centric approach, and the fact that it has Ranbir and Genelia.

OVERALL RATING: 3.5 / 5

When it comes to Brand Ambassadors, Virgin seems to have struck the hot iron in the right place and with the apt tool. But I believe the copy could have still been made more whacky. Also, audience will be seeing Ranbir and Genelia on screen for the first time. So the interaction between the two in the commercial could have been portrayed in a better way.